Our website uses cookies to improve your user experience. If you continue browsing, we assume that you consent to our use of cookies. More information can be found in our Cookies Policy and Privacy Policy .

Poems are a cash cow (in formaldehyde?) for Fryer

It must be great to have celebrity mates, especially when you’ve got one of those ‘do a bit of this, do a bit of that’ careers. Take Paul Fryer, for instance. Singer, artist, sometime Colony Room barman, ‘musical director for the designer Fendi’ and, now, poet. His first volume, Don’t Be So, published at the end of the month by Trolley, has been illustrated by Damien Hirst, enfant terrible of British Art.

There’s plenty of intriguing images from Hirst – as you’d expect when the poems have titles such as Swinging Tackle, Monkey Brain Delicacy and Sex on Legs (pictured). The poetry is a bit Bukowski-meets-Betjeman in a copywriterish sort of way, ‘Sex on legs?/Hell on wheels more like/But if the chemistry’s right/Then the maths don’t matter/Everybody wants you, baby’.

One for the studio coffee table perhaps? Oh, and what Fryer does for Fendi is choose the music for fashion shows.